#process entry

I decided to make it through to the first big story beat, so I need to add in another scene between my first two, but am making progress on that.  It also means taking one more page I had already written and editing it in, and then finding the right place to jump to the big news and then cut it.  Its a little more work and time left than I hoped, but I think I can get it done.

Today I made a lot of progress because I decided to transition into a scnee I had already written, so all I had to go was edit it into the right tense and make a couple tonal changes, and so I was able to add three whole pages today.  I mostly now need to add in a couple more paragraphs to transition properly into that scene, but that should not take long.  Now I only need to decide if I want to cut the chapter ina page or two, or try to get to the first major beat of the story.

I submitted by Academic showcase draft today.  I decided to do a presentation, because I feel like the rest of arts scholars will learn the most from me being able to talk about my process and discuss tips and tricks I learned.  I think a poster for something so based in words will loose a lot of visual interest.  I want to find a way to showcase more of my process visually in my presentation so it can be more interesting.  I’m going to look at taking some of my research images and outlines, with out being to overwhelming.

Today I was able to really take a look at my draft and make a lot of progress.  I deleted the first paragraph and wrote a whole page to take it’s place, and I feel a lot better about what I have written.

I have been ASMing a show this past week, and have had very little chance to write.  However, as I discussed in our class check in, I have really been linking the new format and point of view, and it has really helped me hit my stride.  As I talked about in a previous reflection, I also really like writing in comic sans; it’d weird but it works.  The little writing I did this week flowed easily, and was very productive.  I have over 1000 words in my new document, and will soon hit the point where I can transfer what I had written previously into first person and add transitions to plug them in where they fit in the plot, so I think within a few more hours of work I hope to hit 2000 words.

Another factor that may or may not have helped was a strategy I had seen floating around tumblr and the internet for years but never seriously tried; writing in comic sans.  I do not know if it was the font alone that allowed me to progress more smoothly in my writing last night, but I did feel much less pressured to make it perfect.  Perhaps it helped; more research is needed.

I was motivated by the conversations we had in our practicum this week about strategies to encourage creativity, and I was able to get back into the process.  I did not have a lot of time to actually get writing done, but I did have some great questions to ask myself about my characters, and have new ideas for how to further develop my main characters.  I tend to focus more on story and less on building a protagonist that people actually will be interested in rooting for, so I’m trying to now go back to what my character wants and why she is interesting and powerful.

I have had very little time to work on actual writing this week, but have been thinking a lot about how I can better introduce and develop my characters.  I want to really show a difference between Mara’s natural personality and the personality she has adopted in her fake identity, as well as the mix of the two she adopts while around people from her past.  I think it will better illustrate the shift she goes through over the course of the story, and will be intriguing for readers to see in the opening pages and will hopefully catch people’s interest and clue them in on what is going on behind the scenes a little without having to explain who everyone is and what is really going on.